About Main-Post

Main-Post

The Main-Post is the regional daily newspaper of Mainfranken (Lower Franconia), published in Würzburg, Bavaria, from its headquarters at Berner Str. 2. Its first edition appeared on 24 November 1945 — licensed by the Allies as a non-partisan paper, with Heinrich G. Merkel and Richard Seubert as license holders — and it has appeared daily except Sundays since 1952. Its predecessor, the Würzburger General-Anzeiger founded in May 1883 by the brothers Carl and August Richter, was forced to cease publication under the Nazis in 1941. Since 1 May 2011 the paper has belonged to the Mediengruppe Pressedruck of Augsburg (the Augsburger Allgemeine group), and the Mediengruppe Main-Post is the largest regional media house in Lower Franconia. The editor-in-chief is Ivo Knahn (since October 2022); the managing director is Renate Dempfle. Its website is mainpost.de.

Overview

The Main-Post is Mainfranken's newspaper — the daily of Lower Franconia, the wine country on the Main between the Spessart and the Steigerwald, with Würzburg's Residenz and the Marienberg fortress as its landmarks. It appears in Rheinisch format with a sold circulation of 90,512 copies (IVW, second quarter of 2026, Monday–Saturday); in the first quarter of 2024 the group's dailies sold 97,737 copies (48,194 in the Würzburg area, 31,880 in the Schweinfurt area including the Bote vom Haßgau), with a subscription share of 86.2 percent. Online, the paper reaches 10 million visits and 22 million page impressions per month (June 2024) — making the Mediengruppe Main-Post the most-used media brand in Lower Franconia.

Around 1,000 permanent employees work in editorial, B2B marketing, reader market, B2C, technology, and administration; about 130 editors work in the central newsroom in Würzburg and 13 local newsrooms, supported by around 600 freelance journalists. The paper's history is the history of Würzburg's press: the Richter brothers' General-Anzeiger with Würzburg's first rotary press, the Nazi-forced closure of 1941, the Allies' licensed rebirth in 1945, the postwar growth across Mainfranken, the move from the rebuilt Sterngasse publishing house to the new Heuchelhof complex in the early 1970s — where the paper has been printed since 1974 — and the ownership journey from the Richter family via Holtzbrinck to the Augsburger Allgemeine group.

History

The Würzburger General-Anzeiger (1883–1941)

The predecessor of the Main-Post was the Würzburger General-Anzeiger, founded in May 1883 by the Würzburg brothers Carl and August Richter and printed by the Richter printing house on the first rotary press ever installed in Würzburg. In 1941 the Würzburger General-Anzeiger was forced by the National Socialists to cease publication. In the production facilities of the Würzburger General-Anzeiger, the Mainfränkische Zeitung — first published in 1934 as the paper of the Nazi Gau Mainfranken — was now printed. That propaganda organ appeared for the last time on 31 March 1945, two weeks after the destruction of Würzburg by the Allies.

The licensed rebirth: 24 November 1945

The first edition of the Main-Post appeared on 24 November 1945. Under this name the Allies licensed a non-partisan newspaper in Würzburg; the license holders were Heinrich G. Merkel and Richard Seubert. The Main-Post has appeared daily since 1952.

In the following decades the Main-Post grew ever larger: local editions were added and soon covered all of Mainfranken. The headquarters in Würzburg's city center — the publishing building on Sterngasse rebuilt in 1953, with the later extension on Plattnerstraße — became too cramped. In the newly developed Heuchelhof district, publishing buildings and printing halls for the newspaper and outside products were constructed in the early 1970s; in September 1972 the Richterdruck company moved into its new operating building there. The Main-Post has been printed there since 1974.

Expansion across Franconia

In 2000 the media group took over the Steigerwald-Bote in Gerolzhofen, continued since as the Main-Post with the subtitle Volkszeitung and Steigerwaldbote. On 1 April 2012 the group expanded into Upper Franconia, acquiring the publisher of the Obermain-Tagblatt in Lichtenfels. At the beginning of 2018 the Haßfurter Tagblatt joined as another Lower Franconian title. On 1 April 2022 the group took over Rhön-Medien in the Rhön-Grabfeld district — the Rhön- und Saalepost in Bad Neustadt an der Saale and the Rhön- und Streubote in Mellrichstadt. In 2024 the Mainpost publishing house bought the paper Die Kitzinger from the Mediengruppe Oberfranken.

A family of titles

The Mediengruppe Main-Post today includes the formerly independent dailies Main-Post, Schweinfurter Tagblatt, Schweinfurter Volkszeitung, Bote vom Haßgau, Haßfurter Tagblatt, Obermain-Tagblatt, Volksblatt (formerly Fränkisches Volksblatt), Volkszeitung, Rhön- und Saalepost, Rhön- und Streubote, Die Kitzinger, and the weekly Werntal-Zeitung. The publisher also produces the family magazine Mamamia, seven regional consumer magazines (six under the title markt), and the Wochenpost in the Haßberge district — with a combined weekly total of over 350,000 free copies.

In 1991 the daughters of Carl Richter sold the Mainpresse Richterdruck company (with the Main-Post and the Fränkisches Volksblatt) to the Stuttgart publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck. Holtzbrinck in turn sold the media house, effective 1 May 2011, to the Mediengruppe Pressedruck in Augsburg — the group behind the Augsburger Allgemeine (and the Südkurier).

Content and Programming

The Main-Post's content is Mainfranken's daily life: Würzburg city politics, the Lower Franconian districts with their local editions, the Franconian wine country, the region's economy, and the cultural life of one of Bavaria's oldest university cities. The editorial teams work "digital first": all researched information is published on mainpost.de and via digital channels, and the newspaper pages are produced from the central newsdesk in Würzburg. At 14 locations across Mainfranken, reporters research and publish current local and regional stories; the central newsdesk produces the local sections for Würzburg, Ochsenfurt, Tauberbischofsheim, Main-Spessart (Lohr/Karlstadt/Gemünden/Marktheidenfeld), Kitzingen, Schweinfurt, Gerolzhofen, Rhön-Grabfeld, Bad Kissingen, and Haßberge. The national pages — politics, business, sport — are supplied by the Augsburger Allgemeine editorial team.

The paper's editorial work has won multiple awards, including the Wächterpreis der deutschen Tagespresse and the Konrad-Adenauer-Preis für Lokaljournalismus, and the media group is regularly honored at the European Newspaper Award for outstanding newspaper design and innovative concepts. In 2021 the paper launched "Mordsgespräche," a biweekly true-crime podcast in which the hosts interview people who have dealt intensively with a criminal case from the Lower Franconia region. The KLASSE! project — a free multimedia media-education offering for schools, running since 1995 and used by an average of 1,250 classes with over 25,000 students per school year — is offered white-label to other publishers; 17 publishers now use KLASSE products for their local school projects.

Coverage and Audience

The Main-Post serves Mainfranken — Lower Franconia, the Franconian part of Bavaria, where identity is Franconian first and Bavarian second. The Main-Post title appears, partly as a head paper, in the cities and districts of Schweinfurt, Würzburg, Ochsenfurt, Kitzingen, Tauberbischofsheim, Main-Spessart (Lohr, Gemünden, Karlstadt, Marktheidenfeld), Bad Kissingen (Bad Brückenau, Hammelburg, Bad Kissingen), Rhön-Grabfeld (Bad Neustadt, Mellrichstadt, Bad Königshofen), and Gerolzhofen. In the Würzburg and Schweinfurt regions, the media group holds a monopoly position among daily newspapers. Its readership is the classic regional-paper profile: loyal, subscription-based (86.2 percent of sold circulation), and attached to a paper that has chronicled the region since 1945.

Ownership

The Main-Post belongs to the Mediengruppe Pressedruck of Augsburg, the group behind the Augsburger Allgemeine and the Südkurier, which acquired the media house effective 1 May 2011 from the Holtzbrinck publishing group. The Holtzbrinck group had bought Mainpresse Richterdruck — with the Main-Post and the Fränkisches Volksblatt — from the daughters of Carl Richter in 1991. The long-serving managing director and former editor-in-chief David Brandstätter retired on 31 December 2024; Renate Dempfle has been the sole managing director since 1 September 2025.

The media group also operates four logistics subsidiaries — Main-PostLogistik (Würzburg), Main-BriefLogistik (Aschaffenburg), FN-BriefLogistik (Tauberbischofsheim), and BriefLogistik Oberfranken (Bamberg) — through which letters can be sent nationally and worldwide, plus the agency business Main-Post Corporate (founded in 2013 as MainKonzept, renamed 1 April 2024).

Digital Presence

The website mainpost.de carries the paper's Mainfranken journalism online — the most-used media brand in Lower Franconia, with 10 million visits per month. The media group produces and markets a family of online platforms including mainpost.de, mediengruppe-mainpost.de, and regional portals. Smartphone and tablet reading have been offered since 2010–2011, and the site operates with digital subscriptions alongside the print and ePaper editions. The paper is active on social media with Mainfranken-focused content, serving one of Bavaria's most regionally rooted audiences.